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US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

bbc.com

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Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#311

Post by [deleted] »

hulitu wrote: post #178
wahnfrieden wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s next: https://www.democracynow.org/2025/9/22/headlines/trump_says_... > Trump Says It Is “Really Illegal” for Journalists to Give His Administration Negative Coverage https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/really-i... > The president concluded that when coverage of someone is “bad” 97% of the time, “that’s no longer free speech.” > “They’ll take a great story and they’ll make it bad,” he told repo…

> > Trump Says It Is “Really Illegal” for Journalists to Give His Administration Negative Coverage This is not far away from "defamation" in western world. I'm not siding with Trump here, but every western politician seem to think that he/she/it can do whatever he/she/it wants and every criticism must be regarded as defamation.

[deleted]

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#312

Post by kranke155 »

rayiner wrote: post #254
kranke155 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve created enough of a digital system to manage public opinion (through brain rot, manipulation, bots, psychometrics) that they’re less and less afraid of elections.

Who is “they?”

I assume multiple competing systems at this point. You have Team Jorge (and many others) in Israel, Robert Mercer’s rebranded SCL Group and offshoots, whatever Elon Musk has done to X (who he himself said he used to help Trump win). In Portugal there are bot armies and influence operations on every social network - Facebook and Reddit most of all.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#313

Post by vkou »

9dev wrote: post #261
alluro2 wrote: post #248

Trump is, inevitably, in the comments a lot. And I'm just surprised when people still react to what he does as "unbelievable", "illegal" etc... I get it, but it's weird how persistently people still try to frame Trump's actions into moral, legal, historical, cultural, responsibility or any other framework. He is someone who was born into wealth in the worst way possible, and was never - ever - subject to any moral re…

I concur, Trumps motivation is easy. That of his voters, not so much. They knew what they would get; it was on plain display for them to see. Every single last one of them is guilty of everything that happened and will happen.

The motivation of the voters becomes a lot more understandable when you stop giving them the benefit of the doubt.

This congress and POTUS is, in fact, a good representation of their values, and they aren't ashamed of it.

(You could have given them that benefit in 2016, and somewhat in 2020, but definitely not in 2024.)

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#314

Post by revnode »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #284
revnode wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's not how things work. Senate can't pass anything unless the House agrees and the House is representative of the population. Also, footnote, we've been structuring governments this way for thousands of years. Rome, etc.

The house is similarly disproportionate

How so?

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#315

Post by kridsdale1 »

rayiner wrote: post #254
kranke155 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’ve created enough of a digital system to manage public opinion (through brain rot, manipulation, bots, psychometrics) that they’re less and less afraid of elections.

Who is “they?”

A lot of the members of this very forum, honestly.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#316

Post by ssully »

jordanpg wrote: post #267
mullingitover wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a structural advantage, it's a de facto suspension of the Constitution. Political parties are in theory subordinate to the Constitution, but when the executors and interpreters of the law are first and foremost agents of a political party, and they refuse to be constrained by the Constitution, that's the ballgame. You have a self-coup. What we are witnessing is the aftermath of the self-coup, the Consti…

This is often described in terms of adherence to democratic norms, but I like your framing better. If we have to distill the problem down to its simplest essence, it's the political parties. In particular, it's the existence of the two political parties, whose priorities have transcended those of the Republic itself (mostly the members' self interest). It just so happens to be the Republicans in power when the conseq…

I think distilling in that far is missing the point that this is a republican and right wing issue. It doesn’t “just so happen” that republicans are in power while this is happening, they are the ones who are doing it.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#317

Post by drob518 »

outside2344 wrote: post #141
cheema33 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congress should get around to impeaching and convicting the president then! I hope you know that Congress has abdicated all of their responsibilities to the president. I don't know if the founders ever saw this coming.

The thing the founders didn't foresee was that a president could basically threaten to remove any member of Congress by 1) driving their campaign contributions to zero or 2) threatening to sic his mob on them.

The founders foresaw all manner of bad behavior. They understood human nature better than most today, and they experienced a lot of shocking political acts, everything from telling scurrilous lies about your opponent to outright buying votes. The only thing that might be new to them is the scale at which technology makes these things possible. Read up on the history of early campaigns.

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#318

Post by sjsdaiuasgdia »

efitz wrote: post #282

So there is no other way of reporting such abuses? This one web site that nobody had heard of before today, was our sole way of hearing complaints of this type? Why is it that eliminating one particular web site is somehow a failure of the US Constitution? Yes, Congress is dysfunctional. Welcome to the post 17th amendment world. Repeal that and make the House truly proportional instead of artificially limiting it to…

> If this is such a crisis, then go judge shopping and get an injunction.

So the supreme court can issue a shadow docket ruling a week later, with zero rationalization or justification, staying the injunction?

Re: US axes website for reporting human rights abuses by US-armed foreign forces

#319

Post by the_gastropod »

revnode wrote: post #276
zzzeek wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a giant 147000 square mile space like Montana with 1.1 M people, 2.8% the size of California's population, gets 2 Senators regardless. That is, the Senate gives representation to empty land. That's pretty structural !

Yeah, that's not how things work. Senate can't pass anything unless the House agrees and the House is representative of the population. Also, footnote, we've been structuring governments this way for thousands of years. Rome, etc.

The Senate heavily favors rural voters. The House is supposed to be representative, but favors rural voters thanks to gerrymandering and the cap on congressional representatives (Nebraska should have less than 1 rep in a truly representative institution, for example). Then you’ve got the presidency itself, where the electoral college favors rural voters. And the courts, which reflect the will of the president in cooperation with the senate, so also heavily biased toward rural voters.

There’s a reason the U.S. is the only modern democracy with a system like this. Almost any other country you’re likely to want to live in has a parliamentary system.

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